“Many investors had expected department stores to enjoy robust sales over the holidays in light of a U.S. economy buoyed by low unemployment, higher wages, strong consumer confidence and cheap gas.” Lackluster results from Macy’s and Kohl’s sent “retail stocks into a tailspin… calling into question whether such mall-based chains can compete in a changing landscape where shoppers are shifting more of their spending online.”

“Just 19 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds had jobs in 2018, compared with almost half in 1968.” Shifts like this are “particularly troublesome for restaurants that have depended on young workers since the days of soda jerks and carhops.” Coupled with a tight employment market and increasing wages, restaurants will be “scrambling for cheap labor in 2019.”

On top of February’s big drop in household spending, down 0.9% from a year earlier, “separate data showed wages fell for the third straight month in February, reinforcing the view the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent inflation target will remain a distant goal and keep the bank from dialing back stimulus any time soon.”

“It’s not making headlines yet, but wages in Japan are rising the fastest in decades, in a shift that’s poised to divide the nation’s companies — and their stocks — into winners and losers…. Consumer-focused sectors with low salary bills as a percentage of revenue are best positioned. Logistics and some health-care companies will be most negatively impacted,” according to a report from Morgan Stanley.

“Three years since Mr. Abe took power pledging to end two decades of falling prices and wages, followed by the launch of a massive monetary easing program by the Bank of Japan, headline inflation is still languishing around zero, real wages are falling and the economy has yet to achieve consistent growth.”

Focusing on employment and rising wages, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen believes “the U.S. economy is in decent shape and would be even better if not for the blasted rest of the world.” Markets, on the other hand, “are looking at different signals that suggest the world economy continues to weaken.” For example, “global trade is no longer growing as rapidly as world GDP, which is the opposite of the historical pattern. Containers are piling up at the world’s ports.” Ms. Yellen may “turn out to be right” given market proclivity for volatility and overreaction.

“Decades of anaemic wage increases, lower job security and lacklustre consumption” have undermined a generation of Japanese who are now coming to age. Dismal economic factors have “stripped away” their incentives “to leave home, buy cars, marry, have children, take risks and generally grow up.”

“For the average Japanese investor and consumer, inflation expectations have not budged. Japan needs to jump-start a wage-price spiral of the sort feared from the 1970s…. Such a cycle should be started by increasing nominal wages by 5 to 10 per cent in 2016.”

“China’s devaluation becomes Japan’s problem.” The surprise action raises the question of “what China’s move means more broadly for Abenomics. A sharply devalued yen, after all, is the core of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s gambit to end Japan’s 25-year funk.” But China’s move is not necessarily the death knell of Abenomics, which has been sputtering. “China’s move may catalyze Abe to act. By undercutting Japan’s devaluation, China might increase Abe’s urgency to boost competiveness, innovation and wages.”

Millenials are “the most educated generation in history,” but this same generation is “on track to becoming less prosperous, at least financially, than its predecessors.” Millenials “are faced with a slow economy, high unemployment, stagnant wages and student loans that constrict their ability both to maintain a reasonable lifestyle and to save for the future.” On top of that, previous generations are burying them under government debt and insufficiently funded obligations.